North Korea has put tractor-towed artillery, fire engines, and health personnel in orange hazmat suits on show at a parade in Pyongyang early Thursday, rather than the more usual tanks and ballistic missiles.
Pyongyang has continued to pursue its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes—for which it is internationally sanctioned – during the diplomatic engagement of recent years and often uses military parades to show off its latest developments.
At the last one in January—days before Joe Biden’s inauguration as US president—submarine-launched ballistic missiles rolled through Kim Il Sung Square in front of a grinning Kim Jong Un, with the official KCNA news agency describing them as the “world’s most powerful weapon.”
But Thursday’s “paramilitary and public security forces” event was significantly less assertive, including detachments from the railways ministry, Air Koryo, and the Hungnam Fertilizer Complex, according to KCNA.
The pageant featured rifle-carrying students, personnel in gas masks and orange protective suits, and mechanized paramilitary units, with none of the participants or audience wearing facemasks, images showed.
The biggest weapons on display were small artillery pieces dragged by tractors, with KCNA saying they were driven by cooperative farm workers “to pound the aggressors and their vassal forces with annihilating firepower in case of emergency.”
And instead of the giant missiles—whether real or models—that are the usual climax to a military parade, the last unit to enter the square was the public security forces’ fire brigade.
Leader Kim – wearing a pale grey Western-style suit and matching tie—appeared before the cheering crowd as fireworks went off at midnight and “extended warm greetings to all the people of the country,” KCNA reported.
It did not quote him giving a speech.
“We are closely monitoring the situation,” an official of South Korea’s defence ministry told AFP. “More details require further analysis.”